


Complementary

by breathtaken



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Author's Favorite, BDSM, Canon Era, Community: bbcmusketeerskink, F/M, Femdom, Knifeplay, Pegging, Sub!Athos, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 06:02:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1334695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathtaken/pseuds/breathtaken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He asked himself for years why he kept her locket [...] Now he looks at it every morning, every night, and it reminds him to hate her. For how she lied and tricked her way into his life, and the serpent's knowledge she brought with her; the prison she built for him of his own desires, that he can no more cut himself free of than his own flesh.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Complementary

**Author's Note:**

> For [this](http://bbcmusketeerskink.dreamwidth.org/774.html?thread=267270) kink meme prompt: Athos is a natural sub, Milady is a natural domme.
> 
> Main kinks: pegging, knifeplay.  
> Also mentioned: beating, blindfolding, bondage, choking, gagging.  
> Other content warnings: Suicidal thoughts. 
> 
> Set during Episode 1x08.

After their confrontation in the deserted Paris streets, it takes him two hours and a full bottle of wine to stop shaking.

He's glad, at least, that he managed to remember to hate her. To keep his voice cold and to remember himself, remember all she's done, even when he weakened enough to allow her to pull him in and kiss him, tempting him with the possibility of regaining all he's lost.

He remembered everything, and he didn't fall at her feet.

He asked himself for years why he kept her locket, when it seemed to be nothing more than a talisman for his regret; but since he saw her at Ninon de Larroque's trial and realised what her presence signified, he's glad of it. Now he looks at it every morning, every night, and it reminds him to hate her.

He does it for Thomas, of course, but also for himself. For how she lied and tricked her way into his life, and the serpent's knowledge she brought with her; the prison she built for him of his own desires, that he can no more cut himself free of than his own flesh.

And after the first shock of her resurrection, it makes perfect sense that she would rise again from death to dog his steps and ensure he cannot find peace: because even when he thought he'd killed her, in his heart he never let her go.

At least he has his drink, which makes it harder for him to hurt, or to care, or remember; it shuts off the valve of introspection. But tonight that's not an option – he's putting d'Artagnan through his paces tomorrow, and he owes it to the boy who he thinks of almost as a son not to drink himself unconscious tonight.

So instead, he will sit here by candlelight, nursing the wine he does allow himself; and bowing to the inevitable, open the door to memories of the past he's never been able to shake.

* * *

 

Though looking back, it now seems obvious that she must have brought carnal knowledge of her own to their marriage bed, he didn't understand then how she knew to do what she did.

Surely no previous lover could have taught her that he would be _receptive_ , not when he hadn't even known it himself.

It started off so simply: raking her nails down his back and sides hard enough to scratch, cruel pinches to his nipples and inner thighs, a tug of his hair that forced him to bare his throat to her, to her tongue and her teeth. A bruise sucked into his collarbone as she held his wrists. Making him last, making him wait, making him pleasure her first.

He hadn't known many women, had never been a great charmer, and his head was turned by her all too young. Everything she did seemed then like a natural extension of what he'd expected between them.

"I thought you might enjoy it," she said, "and it seems I was right."

And she was so sweet and sincere that he believed her without question, followed the lead of her conviction, as he was learning to follow her lead in their bed.

As the months passed and he opened to her, she showed him new things, coaxing him along with gentle kisses and encouragements, professions of her own desire; and he learned that he liked the lash of a whip on his body, liked being tied up and helpless against her touch, liked being robbed of his sight and speech and submitting to her every will. Anything that took him deep into himself, to that instinctive core of his being where there was only sensation and desire, obedience, and the urge to please her.

She called it _playing_. They still made love, but never like this; this was something special for him, she said, though he could smell her arousal as she hurt or commanded him, could see the folds between her legs glistening with it.

She always offered him a choice, which he thought then was a sign of her love but now just seems like a trick of collusion; not just whether or not to partake, but what exactly she'd do to him. _Today, my love, I can beat you, or tie you up and tease you until you're wild with it, what would you prefer?_

And sometimes – though sparingly – she would offer his favourite option of all; and he'd say yes, _that_ , every time. She'd tell him to beg for it and he would get straight on his knees without even a flutter of shame, kiss her feet for it, hold up his hands in supplication until she agreed, as she always did, kissing his upturned palms and saying _yes, my love, always what you need._

It's his most shameful and cherished memory: the first time she let her dressing gown fall from her shoulders, to reveal the cause of the shocking protrusion beneath. A leather phallus – and he knows that should have been a clue, that she'd even known where to have a thing like that made, but he was so wonderstruck by the sight of her, all he knew in the moment was that his mouth was dry and how much he _wanted_.

Maybe she'd been right to say that she should have been his husband and he her wife. He certainly wanted her to command him, desperately wanted her to _take_ him, the idea of this inverted, unnatural lovemaking thrilling and terrifying all at once, and when she pushed her prick between his lips he half-thought he'd spill right then and there.

The phallus was cold and hard and not of her flesh, tasting of leather and oil; but as he looked up at her through his lashes, her eyes were heavy-lidded and he could see she was enjoying it. She started to rock into his mouth, the base of the phallus pushing against all the places beneath it that gave her pleasure as it bumped against the entrance to his throat. He pushed himself eagerly forward in response, wanting to please her as best he could, not caring that he was making himself gag.

"Easy, love," she admonished him gently, brushing the tears from his eyes with her thumb; but he could tell he had pleased her, and he wanted to cling to the pure, uncomplicated happiness it gave him and never let it go.

He kept himself perfectly still as she withdrew, until her hand came to his throat, squeezing just enough to be possessive. "Up," she ordered, lifting him by the jaw, and he unfolded his legs and stood, letting her turn him round by the shoulders and shove him onto the bed. "Hands and knees for me."

He turned his head to watch her walk completely unselfconsciously across the room to her dresser, where she kept the bottle of oil that served for removing her kohl as well as other, more intimate uses; and it was the obscene bobbing of the protruding phallus as she moved that made him blush for the first time, and the knowledge of what she would do with it next. 

"Please, Anne…" he found himself saying, knowing he needed something from her, though he couldn't tell what.

She came over to him at once, crouching down in front of him so their faces were level. "Are you scared, my love?"

"Yes," he replied in a small voice, dropping his eyes, unable to hold her gaze. He hated his weakness, wanting to be everything she required of him.

"Don't be," she replied softly, lifting his head again and kissing him, cradling his face in her hands. "I've got you. You being scared now will only make it all the sweeter when you give yourself up to me."

The truth of her words was clear, and he nodded slightly in realisation, before nuzzling his face instinctively against her caressing hands.

"Would you like me to blindfold you?"

"Yes please," he replied, grateful. The blindfold always made it easier to bear; with his sight taken from him, it was simpler to fold inside himself to the calm place that he sought.

As she pushed her fingers inside his body for the first time, he almost forgot to breathe, astonished by the feeling of being breached and filled. At first it was just strange, unnerving, but he tried actively with every fibre of his being to relax and trust her in this, as he trusted her in everything.

He was concentrating so hard on breathing deeply and keeping calm, he really wasn't expecting her to hit a point inside him that made him cry out in surprised pleasure.

After that it was barely a minute before he was reduced entirely to a concert of moans and whines, not sounding like anything that had ever come from his mouth, all he could think of the throb of his cock and the pleasure-pain inside him as she slid her fingers back and forth in ways that made him feel as though he were flying; and when she replaced her fingers with the phallus, her hands gripping his hips to bruise as she thrust in and out of him, it felt like completion.

* * *

 

She told him she wanted them to know each other fully, for each to experience what the other experienced. He still doesn't know if he believes her.

Maybe she truly is the mirror image of him, his complement. Maybe she enjoyed what she did for him as purely and truly as he did.

It would make sense for them to be one and the same; after all, he despises both of them.

It's the alternative that would be unbearable.

* * *

 

As he drains his cup, he closes his eyes to see their home go up in flames again. Her work, of course, destroying the last mute witness of who they'd been, what they'd done.

Had she planned to kill him too? He honestly doesn't know. What he does remember of that night is vague and shifting, the pictures in his mind's eye tilting and lurching, overlain with heat and confusion. When she held the knife at his throat he still didn't understand; and all he could think through the hazy shine of drink was of the last time she'd done it, in that very room; how he'd loved it, and maybe she would give him that gift again.

"Do it," he whispered, thinking of the way the metal had caressed his skin, the click of her footsteps and the rustling of the curtains in the summer's breeze.

Just a few weeks before he hanged her.

She'd blindfolded him first, winding the familiar length of silk over his eyes again and again until he could see only shadows. Next came the gag, filling his mouth and pressing insistently on his tongue, instinctively making him salivate.

What shames him now is the way he would reach for her every time she stepped away, wanting to physically feel their connection, her reassuring touch in the uncertain dark.

He knew it made her withdraw even further, just to see him grasping for her, and yet he could never help it. But he stayed where he'd been put; he'd never have thought to disobey her, like a dog wanting nothing more than to please its master.

He spread his thighs when she slapped them apart, arched his back as she roped his wrists to his ankles with fluency.

She slit his shirt from chest to groin straight down, leaving him bare, slicing through the linen as easily as she did his self-control. It was then that the fear hit him, like a punch to the gut.

He loved her even more when he feared her, though he wonders now how much of it was the desperation of the captive, who sees hope in clinging to his captor.

Or maybe he just revelled in his own fear. He knows _she_ did.

"Kiss it," she commanded, holding cold steel to his mouth, and he slowly, tentatively pushed his parted lips against the flat of the blade, afraid and yearning for what was to come.

She moved slowly and surely as time or the creep of the tide, scraping down his neck, dragging the knife-edge along the ridge of his shoulder and down his arm. One slip could be fatal; he wasn't a soldier then, but had no illusions about the risk they were running. His life entirely in her hands.

It felt almost like being drunk; but where drink obscured, this clarified.

She moved the blade to his back next, and he shivered in the morning air as she scraped across the planes of his shoulder muscles.

He felt himself start to drool.

He had no sense of time any longer. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours with his world contracted to nothing save grey-black shadows and the trembling in his muscles as he kept statue-still, the fine line of pressure at his skin.

Sometimes she stopped suddenly, took the knife away, and waited; and he'd ache to reach for her, pushing against his restraints, the arch of his back and baring his throat all he had left to offer her, as if to say, _I am yours, please have me_.

She pressed the flat of the knife without warning to one nipple, then the other, making him shudder and gasp with the chill and the danger, the pleasure of it.

It was when she finally dragged the blade along the inside of his thigh that he started to cry.

It was all he had; unthinkable to move even if he hadn't been bound, unthinkable to try and speak around the gag. He had given her his sight, his voice, his freedom. He had given her his body and his mind. Everything he was, and as he silently started to shake, the pressure of the blade vanished and he felt her kneel between his legs as her arms came around him, caressing his back, pulling his head to rest at her shoulder.

There was nothing in the world that could reassure him like the feel of her hair, the scent of her perfume, as she held him and rocked him until he knew himself again.

* * *

 

He pours another drink, hands shaking.

All his life, and she's the only one who knows him.

The locket's his warning: not just to be wary of her, but of what happens when he's fool enough to indulge himself, or to think of letting others indulge him.

He became a soldier instead; and what makes him the best swordsman in the regiment is the willingness to push his blade an extra inch deeper, to dodge a split-second later, to push the boundaries of what's possible, in the knowledge that sooner or later he will fail, and then he won't have to live with himself any longer.

Or he'll drink himself to death. They won't find him in time; nobody dares come to his rooms uninvited, not even his friends, not since Aramis got every empty bottle Athos could reach thrown at his head, and then one of the full ones.

He's failed to keep them indifferent, and he'll regret causing them pain. But it still seems far better than waiting until she ruins him.

What's worst of all is the way he longs again – can't stop it – _yearns_ again for the serenity of putting himself in someone else's hands.

When it all gets too much to bear, and the only thing that can hold off despair is the memory of kneeling on their bedroom floor, naked, hands on his thighs and awaiting her, a summer's breeze on his skin from the open windows, and a calm that was ripped from him the day Thomas died.

He hates that he still dreams of her hands on him, but whose else could it be?

The pressure of fabric across his eyes, goosebumps prickling on his skin, straining with the tension of keeping perfectly still. Hands at his throat, squeezing, not quite enough to cut off his air but enough that he feels it's possible, though he would never flinch away from her grasp, never raise his hands to try and stop her.

He drains the glass.

 _God,_ he so desperately wants to refill it.

He's doing this for d'Artagnan, he reminds himself, and he will prevail, he _will_.

But how can he stand against her, when he's already given himself up so completely?

 _d'Artagnan_ , he thinks again. _Porthos. Aramis. Tréville._ Their names like a prayer.

If they truly are both soldiers, then they will serve their respective masters, and come what may.


End file.
